


Where I Found You

by nauticus



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Addiction, Angst, Community: sherlockbbc_fic, Consent Issues, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Drugged Sex, Dubious Consent, Heartbreaking, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Rape/Non-con References, Sad, Self-Destruction, Sibling Love, Substance Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-04
Updated: 2012-04-04
Packaged: 2017-11-03 00:53:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/375256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nauticus/pseuds/nauticus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cocaine meets Sherlock Holmes when the boy is nineteen years old. They remain far away acquaintances while Cocaine debates how best to draw another one in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where I Found You

**Author's Note:**

> Please pay attention to the warnings. Nothing is graphically described, but it could be triggering to some.
> 
> This was written for the Sherlock kink meme prompt found [here](http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/18842.html?thread=111139226).
> 
> Unbetaed.
> 
> I have a [tumblr](http://nauticus.tumblr.com/) now that I post about writing and other fandom-y things, if you lovely readers wanted to check the progress of various writing shenanigans!

Cocaine meets Sherlock Holmes when the boy is nineteen years old. They remain far away acquaintances while Cocaine debates how best to draw another one in, until Sherlock lets Cocaine wrap its strong fingers around his desperate body, giving up control entirely.

Sherlock is twenty-one and it’s easy to let go.

* * *

Nobody knows how he did it, but Cocaine didn’t manage to whisk Sherlock away until after university. Sometimes, Sherlock is stronger than he is given credit for. Most times, nobody stops to think that maybe Sherlock was trying his best to be what people expected from him. All the time, everybody is disappointed in what he’s actually become.

It’s when Sherlock leaves school without a purpose or friendships to show for his efforts that he slips.

He loses contact with his family and he believes wholeheartedly that they don’t care. They must be happy to be rid of the problem child. He snorts a line of white powder off a dirty table with a burst of bitter jealousy towards Mycroft. He snorts another to mask the burning clench of shame.

* * *

Sherlock does well for a while, because despite their mother and father’s tendency to forget they have a younger son, Mycroft never forgets he has a baby brother, and he puts him up in various flats just so he knows that Sherlock has someplace safe to come back to. He keeps the kitchen stocked and he buys Sherlock new clothing once his other things are nothing but tatters.

Sherlock doesn’t say thank you, because Mycroft hasn’t given him what he truly wants.

He’s clean for five months before he gives into the temptation again. It isn’t a hard leap to make, not when he already knows the places and the people he needs to see to make his craving vanish.

He disappears entirely for two years after that and Mycroft is forced to abandon the flat and any hopes that he’ll see his little brother again. When he tells their parents the cold hearted indifference he’s met with is so astounding he staggers back into the wall and wonders why he ever questioned the way Sherlock turned out.

Mycroft spends those two years checking police and hospital records for a young man who fits Sherlock’s description.

* * *

Sherlock is twenty-four when he realizes Cocaine never wanted to be his friend. But he’s too far gone to put much more thought into it than that.

Sometimes, in the rare moments of clarity he has, he lets himself think that he’s better than all this. Sometimes, during the same moments of clarity, he realizes that this is exactly what he deserves, and no more.

Sherlock knows every street in London and he knows where to get the things he needs. He knows which shelters are safe and which to avoid. He knows which restaurants will let him sit at a table to warm up and which will call the police if he so much as glances in their front window. He knows that Jack has pure stuff just like he knows Don will give tainted stuff if you’re pretty enough.

He knows how to get what he wants.

* * *

The first time, Sherlock isn’t sure, but that doesn’t mean it matters. He has no money, hasn’t had any for a long while and has been relying on kind donations, but time for that’s run out, and this man is very convincing. The man’s hand is in his ratty hair and his other is fumbling with a zip.

No convincing is necessary when he’s on his knees, back pressed to a wall, because he’ll do this unwillingly if he wants to breathe again, but what is worse is that he’ll do this willingly if he can get high after.

* * *

The second time isn’t his choice. He feels the ache of withdrawal rearing its ugly head and can almost see Cocaine stretching out a welcome hand, but it’s too far away, so he goes to the only person he can think of. It’s a mistake, but Don doesn’t care about those if he gets what he wants.

Sherlock knows there’s something wrong with the dose, but after it’s taken control of him, there’s nothing he can do. The man is already pulling at Sherlock’s belt, whispering filthy things into his ear, things Sherlock can’t hear through the white noise of blood pounding in his ears.

The next thing Sherlock knows for certain is that he’s lying on a dirty floor and his body hurts in new ways.

 * * *

The third time, Sherlock is smarter. He asks around, does some research, plans and plots until he’s sure. He bathes in a washroom sink and tames his hair a bit, but it’s obvious what he is and what he’s willing to do.

It’s so obvious he comes away that night with a black eye, a sore throat, and a couple hundred quid in his pocket that he plans to put to good use.

It’s not so bad, really.

* * *

He loses count somewhere around thirty-five.

* * *

The alley is dark and smells of stale beer, vomit, and piss, and the loud cheers of the inside crowd float out every now and then, but Sherlock doesn’t hear any of it.

They don’t speak as Sherlock quickly undoes his trousers and pushes them down his skinny thighs. They don’t speak as Sherlock turns around and braces himself on the wall, eyes pressed to his forearms and breathing unsteady. They don’t speak when the crinkling sound of a condom being opened breaks the silence. Sherlock doesn’t cry out when the man breaches his body without any sort of lubricant.

He thinks of other things instead, like the house he grew up in as a child, and how he thinks he remembers having an older brother, and how his maybe-imaginary older brother should have saved him.

But then he thinks of nothing at all as the man disappears after giving him what he was after and that’s that. He shoots up behind a skip not for the first time.

* * *

Surprisingly, Sherlock finds himself in a nice hotel room in the West End. More surprising is the fact that the man he’s with now seems to have no interest in actually causing Sherlock bodily harm aside from providing him with his old friend Cocaine.

Sherlock is skittish and coming down from his high, hands twisting anxiously in the hem of his well worn t-shirt, and he’s wary of this man’s intentions, but he has no right to be, not when he needs this. And he does need this. He needs what is in this man’s computer carrying case. Sherlock can almost smell it in his desire for it.

But the man is gentle with a calming voice and lets Sherlock take a long shower, probably because he has standards and Sherlock does look a proper mess. It’s a hard to avoid reality when one spends most of their time on the streets. Sherlock stands under the too hot spray for long moments, hands tangling up in his hair after thoroughly washing it. He lets himself pretend for a moment that this is really his life, a life of swanky hotels and bars and picking up young things that needed him.

There’s a knock on the door and Sherlock finishes up quickly. He dries himself, but doesn’t redress, because that is rather the point, isn’t it?

The man, Sherlock purposely forgets his name, actually spends time preparing Sherlock, stretching him and opening him up with one slick finger at a time, watching Sherlock the entire time. Nobody’s done this for him before and Sherlock knows that this man just wants to save him, some poor helpless creature he sees the need to rescue, but Sherlock is beyond saving.

He’s on his back, legs spread and a man twice his age leaning over him, giving him compliments, telling him how gorgeous he is, how tight he feels, what a pretty fucking face he has. Sherlock doesn’t have enough in him to do anything, so he lays there quietly, head turned to the side.

He can see the city skyline out of the window and he focuses on that instead of the pressure and control of somebody else being inside of him. He’s already thought of everything and now there is nothing. His mind is blank and so is he. His mind is empty and he is well on his way to being the same.

It’s over after a little while, Sherlock ‘s lost count of the time because it’s easier that way. Somebody told him once that it went quicker if he didn’t think, so he doesn’t think if he doesn’t have to.

The change in attitude is immediate once it’s done, once the man realizes that Sherlock doesn’t want to be saved, he just wants to be high.

* * *

Three days before his twenty-fifth birthday, Sherlock finds himself lying in an alley in the middle of winter in the middle of the night, trying to remember the proper way to breathe.

* * *

Purely by coincidence, Sherlock finds Mycroft’s office on his birthday. He doesn’t know it’s his own birthday, otherwise he might show up with balloons and say they should celebrate that he’s not lying dead in a gutter somewhere, but only barely.

As such, the state he arrives in isn’t worthy of celebration and Mycroft’s assistant threatens to call security if he doesn’t leave.

He’s barely able to mutter to the pretty girl that he’s Sherlock, he’s Mycroft’s brother, _please let me see him please_.

Mycroft is in an important meeting that their parents would be over the moon about if Mycroft spoke to them still. He doesn’t discover Sherlock until his assistant tells him with a panicked edge to her voice that a strange man is waiting for him in his office. Mycroft doesn’t allow himself to hope that it’s Sherlock and certainly can’t believe his eyes when he steps into his office and closes the door behind him.

There’s a brief moment when neither of them recognizes the other, where Sherlock is still partially convinced Mycroft is a figment of his imagination and where Mycroft thinks he’s looking at a ghost.

This ragged creature can’t possibly be his little brother, and Mycroft tries to convince himself of the fact, except that this is very much his brother, even though he's barely recognizable under the weight of the world he carries on his shoulders.

He takes slow and calculated steps towards Sherlock who is looking at him as though he might pounce and hurt him, and Mycroft wonders with a broken heart how many people have made him like this.

Sherlock’s not quite sure what he’s even doing there. He knows Mycroft won’t give him the drugs no matter what he does, what he offers, or how much he begs for it. Maybe that’s what he really wants, for somebody to tell him no.

He watches his brother approach with trepidation, cowering against a bookcase. He’s shivering and barely able to keep himself on his feet, but it hurts too much to sit. It hurts even more to see that look in Mycroft’s eyes. They don’t seem to need words, a lifetime’s worth of conversations pass silently between them, and when Sherlock suddenly finds himself wrapped up in his brother’s gentle arms, he breaks.

* * *

Sherlock worries about ruining Mycroft’s fancy suit. Mycroft worries about his baby brother’s ruined life.


End file.
